When the Gap between the East and the West Emerged

The contributions of this volume show the difficulties in comparing living standards across continents, and the gains to be had from combining different approaches. Regional disaggregation is important since some regions prospered while others declined at both ends of Eurasia.

Likewise, disaggregation by class and status is important since some groups gained while others lost. The complexities involved in comparisons should not be overlooked. However, the findings in this book support the revisionist view that there were no systematic differences in living standards between Europe and Asia before the Industrial Revolution. The results can be summarized according to the three main dimensions discussed: economy, demography, and vulnerability to economic stress.

First turning to the economic dimension of living standards, income development varied a great deal across Europe in the 250-year period before the Industrial Revolution. While real wages were similar in fifteen European cities around 1500, a gap emerged in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries with the pre-industrial success of England and the Netherlands and the stagnation of Southern Europe (Allen 2001). Thus, the real wage gap within Europe in the mid-nineteenth century resulted from diverging economic trends in different countries slid back to the seventeenth century.

Income development also differed between different regions within countries. In England, for instance, it was only London that maintained high real wages, while provincial towns and the rural areas experienced the continental pattern of falling real wages in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Only in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did the high wage economy spread to the rest of England (Allen 2001). Moreover, income development in Europe also differed between social groups between 1500 and 1800.

Real income for the wealthier groups of society increased relative to the income of the poor, due to the different price histories of the goods consumed by these groups.

Thus, it appears that the economic development in Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth century diverged not only between countries, but also between regions within countries and between social groups. Comparisons between the East and the West, therefore, depend on which areas and social groups are compared. Real wages for spinners and weavers in Southern India and Bengal seem to have been at least as high as English ones in the eighteenth century. Wages in India were

lower than in Britain, but food prices were even lower due to higher productivity in agriculture. Also in Japan and parts of China, real wages in the eighteenth century seem to have compared fairly well with those in Italy, Germany, and France (cf. Hanley 1997; Kuznets 1971: Tables 1—2). In fact, China's richest regions—Yangzi and Lingnan—compared well even with England and Holland.

However, as several of the contributions of this book show, there were important regional differences within Asia during the pre-industrial period. While pre-industrial differences in well-being between the most developed parts of Europe and Asia were small, there were substantial differences between the most and least developed parts in each continent. The evidence for detailed comparisons across the full range of experience is not yet available. We can say, however, that the comparisons that have been made, which are generally for the most developed parts of Europe and China, fail to show the lead that Smith, Malthus, and Marx expected.

Comparisons of health indicators also point towards similar living standards at the two ends of Eurasia. In Europe, the height of adults declined from the late Middle Ages to c. 1800 and thereafter rose steadily. This increased level of heights after 1800 has generally been seen as an indicator of an improving standard of living in Europe during this period. Unfortunately we do not have much Asian height data for comparison, but other demographic variables like life expectancy do not indicate substantial differences between Europe and Asia (see Bengtsson, Campbell, Lee et al.

2004). Quite the contrary, recent works by James Lee and Wang Feng (1999) and William Lavely and Bin Wong (1998) have challenged the classical view of the extreme population pressure in the East. These revisionists believe that Malthus was fundamentally incorrect and argue that deliberate infanticide was a more important check on population size than famines and other catastrophes. Early marriages, meanwhile, did not lead to a high birth rate because imbalances in the marriage market, created by female infanticide and restrictions on remarriage, meant that many men could never marry. Further more, the fertility of married couples was lower than in Europe because intervals between marriage and first birth were long by intention, as were subsequent birth intervals. Thus, family institutions differed greatly between China and Western Europe but the outcome in terms of life expectancy and population growth was about the same.

Finally we turn to the demographic response to economic fluctuations. The three European populations studied—southern Sweden, eastern Belgium, and Tuscany—showed marked demographic responses to economic stress. In Italy, the overall mortality rate rose in step with rising food prices. The poorer segments of Swedish and Belgian society exhibited the same response, although not the better-offs who were prosperous enough to avoid this fate. Johansen discovered the same pattern in Denmark. These results show that the standard of living of the least well-off people in Europe—and the majority in Tuscany—was at such a low level in the early nineteenth century that high food prices pushed up mortality. In both eastern Belgium and southern Sweden, conditions improved in the second half of the nineteenth century, indicating a rising standard of living. The developments of real wages and life expectancy are in accord with this finding.

In the two Asian populations—Liaoning in northern China and northeastern Japansimilar demographic responses to economic stress were also present.

However, in these cases, the main differences in response were between different members of the household. In general, people with low status in the household, like female infants and children in the case of Japan, were the ones hardest hit by economic hardship, but in some cases groups with higher status, for example elderly males, were also severely affected in Asia (see also Bengtsson, Campbell, Lee et al.2004). Over time the demographic response to economic stress generally declined, indicating improved living standards in these Asian communities in the nineteenth century. Indeed, even at an early date, some districts in Liaoning were more prosperous than many parts of Europe when the mortality response to high food prices is the indicator.

The contributions of this book show the highly complex and diverse pattern of the standard of living in the preindustrial period. The general picture emerging from these studies is not one of a great divergence between East and West during this period, but instead one of considerable similarities. These similarities not only pertain to economic aspects of standard of living but also to demography and the sensitivity to economic fluctuations. In addition to these similarities, there were also pronounced differences within the East and within the West—differences that in many cases were larger than the differences between Europe and Asia. This clearly highlights the importance of analysing several dimensions of the standard of living, as well as the danger of neglecting regional, social, and household specific differences when assessing the level of well-being in the past.

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Source: Allen R.C., Bengtsson T., Dribe M.. Living Standards in the Past: New Perspectives on Well-Being in Asia and Europe. Oxford University Press,2005. - 495 p.. 2005

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